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"I had forgotten that, and so many things. How could I put everything down on paper? It seemed impossible. No matter what, the majority of life would be left out of this story, this sliver of a version of the life I'd known. But I tried anyway."
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"This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes a writer will be so uneasy before the naked power of his art that he will install within the work itself - albeit with a little shyness, a touch of the good taste of irony - the clear and explicit interpretation of it. Thomas Mann is an example of such an overcooperative author. In the case of more stubborn authors, the critic is only too happy to perform the job."
"A book is as private and consensual as sex."
"For the narrative to exist, so that it could be read and reread even if I was taken away. Stories outlive their writers all the time. We know plenty about Goethe and Charles Dickens from what they chose to tell, even though they have been dead for years."
"I haven't stuck to any formula. Most great writers stick to the same style, but I wanted to be more various."
"I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature."
"I suppose all fictional characters, especially in adventure or heroic fiction, at the end of the day are our dreams about ourselves. And sometimes they can be really revealing."
"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."
"Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible."
"Literature, the most seductive, the most deceiving, the most dangerous of professions."
Explore more quotes by Dave Eggers
"McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object."
"Yousef had been lighthearted during his questions, but there was something very serious and sad under his smile, and Alan knew what it was. It was the knowledge that there would be no fighting, and there would be no struggle, no stand taken, and that the two of them, because they were not lacking materially, because despite injustices in their countries they were the recipients of preposterous bounty, would likely do nothing. They were content, they had won. The fighting would be done by others, elsewhere."
"He handed Mae a piece of paper, on which he'd written, in crude all capitals, a list of assertions under the headline 'The Rights of Humans in a Digital Age.' Mae scanned it, catching passages: 'We must all have the right to anonymity.' 'Not every human activity can be measured.' 'The ceaseless pursuit of data to quantify the value of any endeavour is catastrophic to true understanding.' 'The barrier between public and private must remain unbreachable.' At the end she found one line, written in red ink: 'We must all have the right to disappear."
"If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air."
"I was born into a town and a family and the town ad my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I don not claim exclusivity. Have it Take it from me. Do with is what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity from dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff."
"This was a new skill she'd acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos."
"Who were these people, all of them young couples, a few fabulous ones, tall thin-haired blondes with toned men in perfectly pressed jeans -- neither fearing the loss of the other."
"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let's not forget this."
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